Peter Jackson has announced his next film project over on Facebook! While Jackson himself isn’t directing, his protégé Christian Rivers will be adapting Philip Reeve’s book Mortal Engines, with a script from Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens.

Mortal Engines is the first book in a quartet set in a distant future called the Traction Era. A catastrophic Sixty-Minute War laid waste to Earth, and obliterated national boundaries. People rebuilt society by focusing on “Traction Cities” – that is, mobile city-states that are mounted on tracks and can attack each other for resources as part of a system known as “Municipal Darwinism.” Jackson is a longtime fan of the books, saying, “The moment we read these novels, we knew what exciting movies they’d make. I literally can’t wait to see them!”

The movie will be financed by MRC and Universal, and will begin film in New Zealand next March. Jackson didn’t announce any casting decisions yet, but did note that Weta Workshop and Weta Digital will be working on the film.